EC Drops Ball on Domestic Registry

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It's kind of like dressing up as a
child and pretending you're a police officer or some other adult
occupation, or maybe it's more akin to playing house.

Equality Cincinnati (EC), a gay rights
group, will have a booth on Fountain Square during this weekend's
Equinox Pride festival. During the event, EC will unveil its new
domestic partner registry. Same-sex couples can sign the registry to
show their symbolic commitment to one another.

Cleveland
was the third Ohio city to create such a registry, after Cleveland
Heights and Toledo.

Although
the registry doesn’t grant couples any legal rights per se, it does
allow those who are living together and responsible for each other’s
welfare to obtain a certificate from the city. The document, in turn,
could be used to help secure benefits from employers and insurance
companies in some instances.

But
EC's registry has no official sanction, and seems designed to make
people feel good and like they're taking some sort of action.

The
frustrating part of this effort is that Cincinnati was well on its
way to having a domestic partnership registry at City Hall until
Equality Cincinnati put the brakes on it.

Around
the time of Cleveland's action, blogger Jason Haap and queer activist
Barry Floore began advocating the concept to Cincinnati City Council,
and it appeared they had a majority ready to support the proposal. Little surprise, because a registry becomes a revenue
generator for municipal governments and — as we all know — the
city of Cincinnati has been beset with financial problems in recent
years.

Haap
and Floore ended their push, however, after EC asked them to do so.
The group was working behind-the-scenes to get city officials to
extend employee benefits to the same-sex partners of its workers.
Equality Cincinnati leaders thought the registry effort would draw
the attention of conservatives like Tom Brinkman Jr. and Chris
Finney, who might sue the city and scare officials away from
considering the extension of benefits.

Now,
more than a year later, the city of Cincinnati has neither a registry
nor benefits for same-sex partners, at least as of the last time I
checked at City Hall.

In an online conversation with Haap, EC
member Matt Murray said, “At
this time, it is EC's effort only and will have no legal
ramifications. But this is a first step for a larger goal to be more
like the cities you mentioned. Benefits for partners of city
employees is a goal. We will have a more formal explanation coming
soon but for now we are accumulating data to support are future
goals. I guess the answer to your question is: It's very symbolic.”

Haap told CityBeat, "I
was part of an effort to implement a real
DP
Registry back in December, and we had substantial support on City
Council. Then Equality Cincinnati came along and
squelched our efforts. Now they want to have a pretend registry for
symbolic purposes? Why not just go for pretend and symbolic
marriages? This is a weird kind of play-acting from an alleged
activist organization."